


Lipstick

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:03:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson and Hughes, and lipstick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lipstick

He moves about her bedroom quietly, picking things up, putting them down, as was his way. He's always done this since the first day she became housekeeper and got an office of her own. Handles her things, turning them over in his hands, inspecting them. Sometimes she tolerates it, sometimes she'll rap his hand.

They've asked him to get the things she'll need, to collect up the necessaries, and he's found it surprisingly easy. Not any of her housekeeping dresses, none of the severe black gowns will do. Instead, he's chosen her dark green skirt, the jacket, the pretty white lace blouse. All things that she's fresh and strong in, springlike. He lays them all in a carefully folded pile, smooths them with his hand. Gets her perfume, the light floral scent she only wears on special occasions. It surprises him again how easy it is to collect her fragile underthings, the lightweight stockings, the garters, the chemise.

He supposes they knew that when they asked him instead of one of the maids. Supposes they intuitively knew somehow that he is at home in her rooms, among her possessions; that despite his bluster and foreboding aura, he could be trusted to remember everything.

Carson looks over the small vanity, runs his fingers lightly over the small smattering of feminine things there. He already has her jewelry, her hairpins. There's a small box he's unfamiliar with, a small flat compact that he opens and gazes at. He hasn't seen any in so long that it takes him a moment to grasp exactly what it is. The small cake of glossy red, the tiny brush.

Rouge. No, the brush is too small, too tapered. Lip color, then. He's never seen her wear it that he can recall, and the surface looks unbroken, new. She must have bought it recently and has never found reason to break it in. Carson smiles a little at how the small extravagance was a big thing for her, one more step into modernity. She doesn't need cosmetics, he doesn't think. Her face is beautiful as it is, naked, clean, honest. She doesn't need the powder and color that the women upstairs use. Still. She had bought it, and she shall have it.

He gathers her clothing, her accessories, stores them safely in a neat carpetbag to take round to the undertaker in an hour or so. He'll tell them how she liked her hair, how to arrange her necklace. Tell them to use the lipstick but only in the faintest trace. He'll check her before the funeral.

None of it helps, he knows that. None of this ritual is going to help a single solitary bit of the pain that is surely to come, the pain he's casually put off for a while, stored it away neatly with the silver, with the wine, pain that he'll decant and polish another day. There's time for all that later.

But for now, she needs him one last time. Needs his discerning eye and sharp memory. She's been his housekeeper for years upon years, the other bookend, the second pillar, the unseen half of the matched set. They have worked in tandem since the very first day she came to work at Downton, and he won't fail to hold up his side of the temple now.

Later, it can all come crashing down if need be. But for now, while she's still above ground, he'll be at her side with perfect precision, in lockstep formation, the way he always has been. Besides, it's an occasion, he thinks. A calendar day. This evening she'll wear lipstick for the first time. She'll wear lipstick, and he'll kiss her goodbye, and tell her how lovely she looks.

 


End file.
